1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to display devices, and more particularly to display devices having common electrodes with cutouts having different widths.
2. Description of the Related Art
A liquid crystal display (LCD) device includes two panels provided with field-generating electrodes such as a pixel electrode and a common electrode, and a liquid crystal (LC) layer interposed therebetween. The LCD device displays images by applying voltages to the field-generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the LC layer, which determines orientations of LC molecules in the LC layer. The LCD device is widely used in various electronic devices because of its characteristics, such as low voltage operation, low power consumption, and low weight.
The LCD device, however, tends to have restrictions in the range of a viewing angle. For widening the viewing angle, a vertical alignment (VA) mode LCD device having cutouts in the field-generating electrodes or protrusions on the field-generating electrodes has been developed.
The cutouts and the protrusions enable the tilt directions of LC molecules to be distributed into several directions to widen the viewing angle. Thus, a typical VA mode LCD device has a wide viewing angle that makes the contrast ratio equal to about 1:10.
Although the viewing angle can be widened in a VA mode LCD device, the VA mode LCD device still has several disadvantages. For example, the quality of lateral visibility is poor compared with that of front visibility. As the LCD device has been used in multimedia devices, the lateral visibility has become more important.